So, Tower de Eiffel, wow…

Eiffel Tower was one of those things that is on practically everyone’s bucket list. At least people who have visions of travel dancing in their heads.:) It was magnificent and grandiose and cliché all rolled up into one great 1st impression of Paris outside of our neighborhood digs.

We were smart enough to do the timed entry, and it isn’t bad at all to do it that way. Ignore the websites that say it is hours long. We went the absolute worse time of the year possible because of the ridic amount of tourists, and we only waited 20 minutes to go up. The views are breathtaking and romantic and when I was up there, I was both under and overwhelmed. Does that make sense? Yes, it is ginormous. Yes it is fabulous and historic and all of these wonderful adjectives. But I thought that something magical would happen when I got to the top, like this climactic moment in a movie, but it didn’t. It was just my guy, my kid and me, snapping a million pics of the city and ourselves.

But at the same time, there was a sort of happiness and energy that took over me. I was in PARIS. I was at the EIFFEL. I helped to make my 13-year-old’s dream come true (along with my guy of course!!) and the 13 year old inside of me couldn’t freaking believe I had arrived. And I am not just speaking of the city, but I had made it to a part of my bucket list that seemed unobtainable. It was a little dream nagging at the corner of my cerebral cortex, like the dream of Rome, but in a different way. I was in freaking “Gay Paris” and I felt like I was a part of Paris when I was hundreds of feet about the soil. I became one with Paris in a matter of minutes and now I can’t wait to get back (but never in August again!).

These are some of the 1st pics of this dreamy experience. The 1st one was a bit dark, but I spied it and had to snap it! The second is my babygirl and her “drama bear”, the 3rd is duh-up close (lighting was not super bright that time of day (5ish), the last 2 are self-explanatory, views from different sides. It really shows how the city is laid out. I love how planned and homogenous everything looks. All of the while buildings give the otherwise not-so-clean city a sterile look.

So, of course we hung around for an hour or 2, and the plan was to be up top when the sun set. Well we had timed tickets for 5:30 as I mentioned and according to blogs and travel sites it would take “forever” to get to the top. So I was thinking that we would be there between 7ish and 9 when the sun set. But we weren’t, but I was still thrilled to just be there at all. My guy left 30 minutes before we did to meet up with some of his cousins, so we went gaga over photo ops as the sun was setting a bit on the walk down. It took 20 minutes to descend because I had a bum leg on this trip. But it was cool to stop and look around and see the changes in the sky. If you notice, the 4th pic, you can see a tip of a finger, my kid being a kid, that is why the pic was off-center.:)

So, after we met with the guy’s cousins and had a meal, we made our way back for the grand finale-The lit up version of the tower. I wish that I would have recorded it lit and then blinking, but I have it only blinking which it does for 5 minutes at the top of the hour. Still cool. So cool as a matter of fact, that at 11 p.m. there were hundreds of people everywhere waiting for the same thing that we were. But at that moment in time, it seemed like it was only us…